This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art, which may be related to various aspects of the present disclosure that are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present invention. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
Conventional image capturing devices render a three-dimensional scene onto a two-dimensional sensor. During operation, a conventional capturing device captures a two-dimensional (2-D) image reflects the amount of light that reaches a photosensor (or photodetector) within the device. However, this 2-D image contains no information about the directional distribution of the light rays that reach the photosensor (which may be referred to as the lightfield). Depth, for example, is lost during the acquisition. Thus, a conventional capturing device does not store most of the information about the light distribution from the scene.
Light-field capturing devices (also referred to as “lightfield data acquisition devices”) have been designed to measure a four-dimensional (4D) light-field of a scene by capturing the light from different viewpoints or angles of that scene. Thus, by measuring the amount of light traveling along each beam of light that intersects the photosensor, these devices can capture additional optical information (information about the directional distribution of the bundle of light rays) for providing new imaging applications by post-processing. The information acquired/obtained by a lightfield capturing device is referred to as the light-field data. Lightfield capturing devices are defined herein as any devices that are capable of capturing lightfield data. There are several types of lightfield capturing devices, among which plenoptic devices, which use a microlens array placed between the image sensor and the main lens, and camera array, where all cameras image onto a single shared image sensor.
Lightfield data processing comprises notably, but is not limited to, segmenting images of the scene, generating refocused images of a scene, generating perspective views of a scene, generating depth maps of a scene, generating extended depth of field (EDOF) images, generating stereoscopic images, generating a focal stack, (which comprises a collection of images, each of them being focused at a different focalization distance), and/or any combination of these.
Processing the lightfield data is a challenging task due to the large amount of data that is acquired with the lightfield data acquisition devices.